If this is his hope, he will find himself very much mistaken.
We told you in a recent number about the railway that the troops were laying across the desert. With the aid of the iron horse—as the locomotive is often called—the dreaded desert can be crossed with ease, and the invading army can have all the supplies it needs following it wherever Osman Digna leads.
There is sad news from the Philippine Islands. A cyclone and tidal wave have visited the island of Leyte, which is one of the Philippine group, and have done a great deal of damage, sweeping over a vast tract of country and killing thousands of people.
A tidal wave, or, more properly speaking, an earthquake wave, is an extraordinarily high wave, supposed to be formed by the disturbance caused by an earthquake in the bed of the sea.
The action of the earthquake causes the waters to retreat from the shores, and gather themselves into a mighty mass, which suddenly turns and advances upon the shore in one huge wave of enormous height. This wave sweeps on over the land until it has spent its force, when the waters rush back to the sea once more.
The force of such a wave is so great that it destroys everything in its path, tearing up rocks and boulders, and carrying them along inland with it.
In 1746, when the coast of Peru was the scene of one of these catastrophes, a war-ship was lying at anchor in one of the bays. The wave came sweeping down upon it, lifted it up on its crest and bore it several miles inland, depositing it on the side of a hill.
The island of Leyte, which has just been visited by one of these terrible waves, is one of the smallest of the Philippine group. Its trade was carried on with Manila, on the island of Luzon, where the rebellion is raging. It was a thriving little island, and boasted of several busy towns, all of which have been completely ruined and in part swept away by the earthquake wave.